The Learning Connection

Collaborative projects between schools and colleges have been
proliferating for two decades, and yet the two sides still have not
come close to realizing the full advantages that such cooperation might
mean for their mutual betterment. In light of this spotty history, one
hesitates to make rosy predictions, but perhaps some of these
partnerships are starting to show what may be possible.

A problem until now, with some notable exceptions, has been the
tendency toward a hodgepodge approach without a sense of larger vision.
Furthermore, K- 12 education all too often has had no choice but to
dance to a tune dictated by higher education. We see, however, the
beginnings of greater coherency in the collaborations, as well as the
emergence of some imperatives that are making colleges and universities
more willing and eager participants.

Try as they may, institutions of higher education cannot ignore
trends and developments that are underscoring the ineluctable links
between the fortunes of the two sectors. We have in mind the
connections between previous schooling and remedial education on
campuses, the preparedness of the teacher corps in elementary and
secondary schools, the pressure for more diversity in higher education,
the conditions of inner-city neighborhoods that surround urban
campuses, and questions of why governing structures cannot be more
streamlined.

Higher education
institutions cannot ignore trends that are underscoring the
ineluctable links between them and schools.

It seems to us that collaboration may be accelerated by focusing the
efforts of schools and colleges in these five areas: standards, equity,
teachers, governance, and community-building.

Standards. For years, institutions of higher education
blithely went their way in setting requirements, hardly seeming to
care about the impact on high schools. When admissions requirements
were changed in the 1970s to de-emphasize foreign languages, for
instance, the effect on high schools was catastrophic.

In today's climate, which stresses standards in elementary and
secondary education, some states are now leading the way in
demonstrating how the sectors can cooperate. Maryland's attention to
standards has resulted in a Partnership for Teaching and Learning,
K-16, that—as never before—has produced in-depth
conversations among the heads of the state education department, the
state university, and the higher education secretary. The Oregon
university system's Proficiency-Based Admissions Standards System, also
known as PASS, is being developed in close cooperation with the high
schools that will have to help young people meet those standards.
Georgia's prekindergarten-through- postsecondary initiative is linked
to 15 regional P-16 councils around the state that bring people from
both sides of the education divide to the same table.

Does this mean that these three states have solved the problems of
collaboration? Not at all. But it does indicate that they are
discussing mutual concerns that in the past received little or no joint
attention. The models established in the three states exhibit elements
that may be adopted elsewhere as the standards movement advances.

Equity. As members of minority groups come to form a
majority of the students in more and more public school districts,
higher education must take notice and start acting
appropriately.

What one sees happening in California, for example, are separate
attempts by the University of California system and the California
State University system to work with school districts as never before
to boost the readiness of minority students for academic work at the
campuses of the two giant systems. The process, to date, is messy and
flawed, but—like creation itself—from out of these inchoate
attempts may finally come something meaningful.

Educational institutions at all levels are on the front lines when
it comes to ensuring that the growth of a diverse racial and ethnic
population will be a blessing.

Other ways of working together to promote educational equity can be
seen in such places as El Paso, Texas, and Memphis, Tenn. The
University of Texas campus in El Paso has forged close relationships
with several school districts in its area through the El Paso
Collaborative for Academic Excellence, an effort that shows the kind of
improvement that leads to higher test scores. And Middle College High
School in Memphis, a collaboration between the local school system and
Shelby State Community College, is one of a couple of dozen such
ventures across the country attempting to replicate the success of New
York City's Middle College High School. This concept, which strives to
bring equity to youngsters who might otherwise be destined to join the
ranks of dropouts, had its prototype on the campus of the City
University of New York's LaGuardia Community College.

Such ventures as these are crucial if diversity is to play itself
out in positive ways. Educational institutions at all levels are on the
front lines when it comes to ensuring that the growth of a diverse
racial and ethnic population in the United States will be a blessing
for all concerned.

Teachers. No longer can higher education ignore its
connection to the teacher crisis, whether the issue is producing an
adequate number of teachers in various subject areas or ensuring that
teachers measure up to high standards. Increasingly, collaborations
are taking on this challenge.

An illustration of this trend is on display in Cincinnati, where the
public school system, the local teachers' union, and the University of
Cincinnati have joined forces to produce professional-development
schools. Teachers are also the focus in Mississippi, where Jackson
State University is working with teachers to improve early-childhood
instruction, to provide on-the- job improvement for K-12 teachers, and
to raise the number of teachers in the state who apply for
certification from the National Board for Professional Teaching
Standards.

No longer can
higher education evade its reponsibility for the quality of
instruction in the nation's elementary and secondary
schools.

The effort in Cincinnati has been hampered by uneven commitment as
turnover occurs at both the university and in the school system; in
Mississippi, faculty members at the university have shown something
less than wholesale enthusiasm for working with schoolteachers. But the
seeds of such attempts, planted on more fertile ground, are bound to
bear fruit eventually. No longer can higher education evade its
responsibility for the quality of instruction in the nation's
elementary and secondary schools.

Governance. Are there ways in which school systems and
higher education institutions can combine efforts in behalf of more
efficient governance? This is surely one of the most difficult areas
of collaboration, and it has gotten scant attention. But the payoffs
could take the form of better education at a lower cost, goals that
would resonate well with taxpayers.

Boston University's bold venture with the Chelsea, Mass., public
schools, involving itself in virtually every aspect of the system's
operations for an entire decade, demonstrates the possibilities. One
has to think that colleges and universities elsewhere could lend their
expertise to troubled urban school districts in similar fashion. The
experiment in Pueblo, Colo., where the University of Southern Colorado
and School District 60 merged some administrative positions and tried
to iron out the seams in the K-16 system, represents an instructive
story of do's and don't's. Its successes have been modest, but it is a
case study from which others can learn.

We hardly expect to see a set of wholesale mergers between school
districts and universities. There are, however, locales around the
country in which both sectors could benefit by working more closely,
and even by climbing into bed together in those parts of the house most
friendly to cohabitation.

Community-Building. The twin causes of altruism and
self-interest can be served by institutions of higher education
playing more prominent roles in the betterment of the neighborhoods
in which their multimillion-dollar plants are situated. Inner cities
and their long-suffering school systems cannot heal themselves; nor
can colleges and universities thrive to their fullest when they exist
in the midst of deprivation.

Both the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and Trinity
College in Hartford, Conn., recognized this fact of life. The viability
of both institutions was threatened by the collapse of surrounding
community institutions and local schools. Penn and Trinity have
struggled in tandem with community groups to combat urban ills. Part of
the process has been an attempt to improve schools just blocks away
from these institutions of higher education.

Colleges and universities have their own interests to promote, and
they hardly can be expected to be the sole entities promoting urban
advancement. But, in combination with other groups, institutions of
higher education represent a largely untapped resource for helping turn
around America's inner-city neighborhoods. And, in the process, the
colleges and universities situated in these locales will be aiding
themselves.

This, then, is the new face of school-college collaboration. We
readily concede that the work has only begun. We are encouraged,
though, that the dynamics of the time have produced a slightly more
even basis for partnership. Perhaps this sort of collaboration may soon
become more than an object of lip service.

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